Data: Lockdown drives increase in digital piracy
April 27, 2020
By Colin Mann
Findings from digital piracy data specialist MUSO reveal that content piracy has significantly increased with unprecedented gains for film piracy since social distancing and lockdown measures were enforced in March.
When comparing the last seven days of March to the last seven days of February 2020, MUSO’s data shows film piracy website visits increasing as follows:
Italy + 66%
India + 63%
Spain + 50%
Portugal + 47%
Canada + 45%
UK + 43%
USA + 41%
France + 41%
Germany + 36%
Russia +17%
This increase in visits to online film piracy sites in the last week of March reveals that as more countries enforced lockdown and required citizens to self-isolate, demand for content via piracy grew exponentially.
Total visits to piracy sites in March 2020
USA 1,082,933,014
Russia 727,169,953
India 581,207,923
France 394,045,905
UK 300,150,947
Canada 284,522,464
Germany 256,947,543
Spain 236,747,290
Italy 197,697,732
Portugal 54,681,500
“Piracy or unlicensed consumption trends are closely linked to paid-for or licensed content,” notes Andy Chatterley, CEO of Muso. “So, just as Netflix has seen large subscriber gains, we have seen a significant spike in visits to film piracy sites. We will continue to monitor the data closely as the pandemic continues. Whilst these numbers give a snapshot view of piracy data, there are significant deeper insights to be found across our full data set.”